


the measure of love ain't loss

by eudaimon



Category: The Hollow Crown RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-19
Updated: 2013-10-19
Packaged: 2017-12-29 21:44:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1010461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eudaimon/pseuds/eudaimon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There will be no more stutters or stumbles.  The time for words is over.</p><p>(Michelle wonders why, sometimes, Joe just seems so shy).</p>
            </blockquote>





	the measure of love ain't loss

**Author's Note:**

  * For [newredshoes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/newredshoes/gifts).



> For [Newredshoes](http://archiveofourown.org/users/newredshoes/profile). Because she needed it today and I was all too happy to provide, especially with these two. Who I love writing and can only write for her.

Suddenly, Joe gets shy. Michelle feels it happen; she loses him, just for a beat or too.

"What?"

He shakes his head, rubs the back of his neck with one long-fingered hand. He's half Hotspur, half not - similar trousers, but paired with a Clash t-shirt - and he looks spare and flustered, a little colour sprung into his cheeks and the tip of his nose. They're rehearsing at her flat and it's warm in this room; being at home, she's stripped down to vest and jeans, her boots discarded so she's shorter than him in sock feet. Her hair's scraped back and her makeup rubbed off hours ago, so she must look dreadfully short and plain. Thankfully, there's no sign of Tom (who, more and more, has Hayley in tow, who is the sweetest girl in the world, but always looks so infuriatingly _perfect_ ). It's just her and Joe, and she knows that he won't judge her or think less of her. Or, at least, she _hopes_

Now if only she could get to the bottom of why Joe's suddenly gone so bloody strange.

"Do you not love me?" she prompts. "Nay, tell me if you speak in jest or not."

He's definitely blushing and it's a long, long moment before he manages to look her in the face. There's a pause and then he's stepping in, all Hotspur in that moment as he surges forward, and catches her face with one hand, pulling her up into a kiss.

Oh. _Oh_.  
She supposes that she should have seen it coming.

And yet here they are.

*

It's all a bit of a fumble, really. A messy, off-centre kiss, one of Joe's hands on the back of her neck, the other against her side. Her hands fumble up under his t-shirt, looking for bare skin to centre her. There's something so mercurial and wild about him as Hotspur; she feels a powerful need to make sure that he's made of nothing but flesh and blood. Joe Armstrong, who's never done Shakespeare before, who doesn't really fit in with this mess of clever posh people that he suddenly finds himself in, with Ben and Tom and Hayley. He's got the same problem as Michelle herself has - she's not quite as posh as she pretends to be.

Which leaves her open to moments like this, when he's so close to her, and she can't quite remember who she's supposed to be.

"Brave choice," she murmurs, her fingers skimming along the nobbled line of his spine, up between his shoulder blades. One of his hands slips down to her hips, pulling her in closer against him. There's that smile, the one that she loves, not Hotspur's but _Joe's_ , crooked and a little shy, slow to turn up but warm once it arrives.

"Sometimes, you've just got leap," he says, accent unexpectedly broad now that there's no script to read from. "Trust someone to catch you."

"Is that what this is?"  
"Oh, aye," he says, bending his head to kiss her again. "Leaping."

Michelle's never been that good at leaping; she likes safe bets and solid ground, but there is something about Joe that's more kinetic than that - entirely push and pull. She knots her fingers in the hem of his t-shirt and pulls it up, stripping him half naked, just like that. He's spare and long, the lovely lines of his bones pushing against his skin. She traces the line of his hipbone with the pad of her thumb.

"Oh, Joe," she breathes, bending her head to press a kiss against his chest, right over his heart. He catches her hair with a crooked finger and tucks it behind her ear. "Quick, quick."

"That's my line," he says, laughing as he bends his head to take a kiss, already unbuttoning his trousers. He's going to be naked before she is and MIchelle finds that she doesn't really mind the thought of that. This is all him, after all - he's led them here - and she finds that she wants to see what she's getting herself into. She's spent weeks getting ready to be his wife and yet, somehow, she never really planned for this. 

In the end, it's her hands that push his trousers down over his arse, working them down and strip him entirely naked, inch by inch. She stands back to really look at him and there's something so entirely lovely about him, would be even if she didn't know him so well, even if she didn't know that he understands dialogue beautifully, interprets things wonderfully, knows exactly how she takes her tea. His dad says he's gregarious, makes note of his temper. Everything's on the surface with Joe. Michelle knows that she herself can be unknowable and difficult to read. She appreciates the obvious in others.

Joe's well on the way to being fully hard and she curls her fingers around him, stroking slowly.  
His cock twitches in her hand; he lets out a sighing breath against her mouth.

 

Words, words, words. During rehearsal, all they do is talk.  
She's not that interested in talking, after that.

The vest and jeans come off easily enough and, underneath, she's all plain black cotton. She owns prettier things. She hadn't been planning on this when she got out of the shower this morning. She doubts it matters. Not with the way that Joe's looking at her as she reaches behind herself to unhook her bra.

There's a line in Act III, when Hotspur's taking the piss out of Glendower, trying to stay on the right side of him at the same time, and he tells Kate, his Kate, that she is _perfect in lying down_. Michelle can't help but think of that as she lies down on her own bed, letting her knees fall apart so that Joe can slide between them. He's taller than the last few men she's been with, skinnier, and he feels good when he settles against her. There are condoms in a box beside her bed, and she hands him one between kisses, lies back against the pillow and watches him hold his breath as he rolls it down over himself. He leans down and she rises to meet him, brushes his mouth against the sharp slashes of his collarbones, the hollow of his throat. He pushes his fingers into her hair to tilt her face up to hers for a kiss.

"Tell me I can, Shell," he murmurs. "God, please."

(Secretly, she loves it when he calls her that, carelessly shortens her name like that, because it makes her think of sea-shells, which are whorled and intricate and come filled with mysteries shaped like the sound of the sea. She likes to think that he can see all of that in her, this boy named for the patron saint of house-hunters, carpenters, Canadians and everybody who doubts).

"You can," she says, nodding. "You can."  


She's thirty years old, far from being a virgin, so it's not a surprise when he slides into her, fills her so completely, so perfectly. She isn't surprised by it but it still feels like some sort of revelation because it's his body above her - something about how you can know a person and how they can be utterly unknowable at the same time, all at once.

Her hands roam. She touches all of the parts of him that she can as he moves inside her, against her. Her fingers skim his shoulders, his spine, the flat planes of his chest and belly. She scrapes the edges of her thumb nails across his nipples and sucks on his bottom lip. She finds herself entirely hungry, all of a sudden, moving against him as much as she can. Something in her head clicks into place. 

It's right. It's just _so_ right.  
So why think about it too hard or question it.

When she comes, her nails dig into his shoulder, raking bloody scratches into his skin (which, tomorrow, she'll remember, hidden under his plain t-shirt, and blush while someone else is talking to her about costume fittings). He laughs, breath huffing out against her mouth and, when he comes, he whimpers, face buried into the crook of her neck.

"Oh, Joe," she says, softly, combing her fingers through his hair. "Oh, my darling."

*

In the shower, she sings to herself, no whole songs but a jumble of lines and lyrics. If she turns, she can see him through the fogged glass, sprawled on her bed, an untidy jumble of limbs, still naked as the day he was born. Unexpected. But beautiful.

He'll stay the night. In the morning, they'll both take the tube but, before they go, he'll make her tea and get it right without asking.

But there'll be no more shyness. No more stumbles.  
And not one single ounce of doubt.


End file.
